MotherRoots Healing Arts

Weaving Ancient Healing Ways into Tools of Transformation

~ Welcome to MotherRoots Healing Arts ~

Melissa Potter, LMT, BSW, Shamballa Master

Persephone, Persephone, Speak to me of your mysteries!

I live by these words. Every day I remember that I am a daughter of the earth and these words are all I need to remember to embrace the cycles of my life. Embracing the ancient cycles of the earth and moon gives us the opportunity to connect deeply to all the ways in which our life can unfold. Then, the dark and the light are given equal honor, and the gifts of wisdom within each experience can be integrated into the soul. Our souls have come to weave many different kinds of teachings into itself. Trust the processes that you are in no matter how they feel. It is all meant to be in the great big picture of your life's journey. Let die what must die and open the door to the opportunities that lie before you. It is a great mystery, your life! Make it so by believing it is so! Goddess Bless!

To Be of the Earth

To be of the Earth is to know

The restlessness of being a seed

The darkness of being planted

The struggle toward the light

The pain of growth into the light

The joy of bursting and bearing fruit

The love of being food for someone

The scattering of your seeds

The decay of the seasons

The mystery of death

And the miracle of birth

~John Soos

MotherRoots Healing Arts Services

Craniosacral Therapy, Somato-Emotional Release, Massage Therapy, and Spiritual Counsel through Astrology and Tea-Talks are all ways I can work with clients on their healing journeys. I also love to teach women about the seasons and cycles of the earth and moon, and the ways that living in harmony with them can bring great joy, harmony, and depth to our lives. In my Roots Deep, Branches Rising circles and other classes, women gather to celebrate the journey of being a woman through song, chant, art, ritual, connection to nature, and emotional-healing exercises.

1 and 1/2 hour bodywork sessions ~ $100.00

1 hour bodywork sessions ~ $75.00

Intuitive Astrology

At the moment of birth we are attuned by the planets, asteroids, and luminaries of our solar system. What does your birth chart have to offer you? Wisdom, Insight, Affirmations...Gifts, Challenges for Growth, Blessings from your soul.I am so passionate about doing astrology readings that I can hardly begin to write about it! For a reading of your natal chart, or a transit reading, which talks about the energies happening in your life presently, you will need the following:Date of BirthLocation of BirthDocumented Time of Birth Astrology reading ~ 1 and 1/2 hour session ~ $100.00Astrology reading ~ 1 hour session ~ $75.00

Roots Deep, Branches Rising!

Roots Deep, Branches Rising﻿Women's Sacred Spirituality Circles

These are the ancient and forgotten adventures that our authentic self longs for!

Once you register, you will gain access to a virtual classroom where all course materials reside as well as the vibrant Wise Woman University community of thousands of women. The classroom is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week so that you may log in whenever it's convenient for you.

It is my deepest honor to introduce the concept of the Divine Feminine Goddess in all the work that I do.

I had the pleasure of doing my training with the founder of Heart-Centered Therapy (HCT), Alaya Chikly, of the Chikly Health Institute, one late-April several years ago. This is how Alaya describes HCT: HCT is a process that is guided by the profound wisdom of the heart. The heart naturally knows how to unify and dissolve beliefs and mental constructs that may have held us in pain, confusion and separation. HCT offers deep healing without reliving the trauma as we are held in the safety, love and compassion of the heart. When we're able to stop identifying with who we are not, we are free to discover who we truly are!

We not only work in the present moment, but also access the original trauma where negative decisions and beliefs were formulated. The masterful dialogue techniques help to guide the client to connect fully with their own heart to identify and transform the emotional component of disease in the body, the related trauma, as well as the ancestral patterns that have sustained wounding within the immediate family and the family lineage. Inside this gentle and respectful process is a very direct, straightforward approach that pierces straight to the core of an issue.

This work will help along your journey of healing, and as a result, can help your family to heal, deepen intimacy and enhance communication. People come because they want to heal, to be free, to love again, and to be loved. HCT is an experience that restores hope. The depths of the work cannot be met until the heart is awakened. The heart is the key, the access point for the journey to begin. Bring yourself on this sacred journey. HCT is not a replacement for counseling with a qualified therapist, but is an alternative, safe way of beginning to understand yourself more clearly.

Have I mentioned how much I love the entire concept and feeling of being grateful? It is TRULY the secret KEY to joy. I even love the word. Just saying the word, GRATITUDE, brings me into my heart where it's energy of thankfulness fills my entire body. Gratitude is the most remarkable feeling to me. The Grateful Heart is the heart that shines and glows; it is the heart that beats in peace. When I'm grateful for everything I have been given, grateful for the simple gifts of life, it does not mean that I can't also want something else; it just means that what I want is what is more authentic to who I am.

Gratitude is like a washing away of the hunger. It leaves me full of light and love and satisfaction. From this place of love and fullness, I feel Holy. I really do. This is what I have discovered: Standing beside peacefulness and happiness, there are other important things that happen when I focus on my blessings. When I am feeling grateful for what I have, all the rest of the busy-ness and craziness of life and the media and the world falls away. When Gratitude Happiness dances in my heart, all of a sudden I can tune into what I TRULY want and need. All the "shoulds" go away. (You should be doing this. You should be working on that...Why don't you have this yet? Why haven't you accomplished that yet? You should have done such and such by this age) All these wicked, internal pressures go away.

I begin to see and feel my purpose for being alive! I see how one road led to the next. I see the synchronicities. I see the golden thread of a vocation, a calling, woven through my entire life and how each and every step, turn, twist, fall and rise of my path has brought me here to this exact spot. I can see it and follow it to fulfillment when I am at peace with my life, my past and all that the past has taught me. And when I am grateful, I can feel who I am INSIDE. When I feel who I am, I am in touch with my Calling. And I remember, YES!

Oh yes, I now remember the things that make me so happy I could scream, jump on the table, fall down and die right now because I am so happy and I have lived fully doing this thing I love more than anything in the world! I remember those things and then I can get back on track doing what I most love to do.

My calling does not feel like WORK. It feels like, THIS IS EXACTLY WHY I WAS BORN, inside me. It feels like, GOD, inside me. It feels like, I AM HOME, inside me.

SeaMoon

Melissa Potter, LMT

“The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea.”

I have a raw hunger for water; cold, ocean water, flowing water, singing waters over stone. I love the morning, misty peace of a clean pond. Our stormy, wild Atlantic Ocean is the greatest healer I have ever met. This past weekend I visited the ocean with some friends who live nearby. Whenever I am in the presence of the sea, I'm afraid I'll never leave the rolling, wave~love of the Mother Ocean. It's late May now and I wonder if there is a more perfect time of the year to offer myself to the body of the Goddess of the Sea! Walking along the shore or swimming out just past over-my-head is my preference. I once said to my old friend Barbara, "I love the ocean!" She replied, in her practical, Taurus way: "No you don't. You love the shore." She's right about this. I'm not a fan of deep, dark water except from a distance and in it's symbolic reference to the depths of our unconscious selves; our deep psyche! Oh, then I love the deep waters!

Water as the Symbol of Our Deepest Self

Water is a beautiful symbol of one's emotions because water flows and ebbs and expresses itself in so many forms. We very often attribute emotional states of mind and body to water when describing it; the raging sea, the quiet brook, the peaceful lake, the calm pond, the flowing river. Water is the deep psyche, the seat of our dreams, the loving guidance of our intuition.

At the sea, in a bath, or by a crystal-clear, clean pond at sunrise I am filled all the way through myself and feel overflowing with love. I am welcomed home. I feel so welcomed home.

And that, too, is how it feels when I am at peace with my emotions. This is how it feels after I have held, in honor (even if with great difficulty and feeling like I am being tortured in the process!) the fire of my anger, the depth of my grief, the ecstasy of my joy and the song of hope and faith that gets me through the journey that is my soulful life. Water is indeed the symbol of our emotions, our soul, and our subconscious selves. Yet it also brings us right here into the very conscious, totally aware place of this very moment.

I have always said that I would rather be fully alive and feeling everything I can than living in a state of numbness (though sometimes we need this too, for a little while, as a reprieve from pain...) because if I am closing off my feelings of anger, you can believe that I am also closing off my feelings of passion, creativity and power. If I am closing off my feelings of sadness and grief, you can believe that I am also closing off my feelings of love and joy.

The Sea is my Mother, my Sister, my History

I got a vanity plate this year. It reads, SEA MOON. I love this because it reminds me of my love of the sea, the moon, and what these things represent to me: intuition, magic, dreams, emotions, history, family, safety and security, rhythm, wildness, healing, peacefulness, the sacred night, ancient women's mysteries, raw beauty, wisdom, and our instinctual nature...

The Song of the Seals

I've been writing about the seal maiden, the sea, and my connection to these flowing, wild, primal energies. The folk stories and songs of the Seal Maidens always capture the attention of my soul when I hear them. I feel them in my heart.

When I spend time near the ocean, it's as if I have risen out of this great, salty cauldron of transformation and I feel that my seal-skin, my soul-skin as Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes calls it, has been returned to me.

These archetypal stories bring me very deeply into my own soul then up again to float on the waves; a reprieve, a rest, a blessing from the bright sun before we return again to the magical depths to do the work of our souls. Through the most profound pain of my life, love comes to me thru magical synchronicity and divine timing. Divine guidance, blessings, miracles and messages come to us from every direction. Opening the soul-eyes helps us to see these! Some of my favorite serendipitous experiences involve seals. One year at sunrise on my birthday: we swam naked in the sea on Cape Cod. To my delight and surprise, I noticed a seal near me, in the water! On another visit to the Cape, my son and other children were swimming at sunset in the waves. Red light from the lighthouse behind us rhythmically scanned the waters. "What is that beside the children?" I asked my partner. Seals! More recently, I went to the ocean at Beltane, the sacred holiday of my Celtic ancestors, falling halfway between Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice. It rained in the night by the sea. I pulled my car into several look-out points but kept feeling called to move further along the coast. Finally, I saw the perfect opening between boulders. It drew me closer. "The gateway...", I thought. Even through the thick fog and rain, I saw it. A swimming, jumping seal. Suddenly, another followed behind. The seals were my gift from the Mother.First one, then two; swimming in that wild sea!Magic discovered by my intuition calling meto that pull-in, to look at the wind-swept waves.Beyond them, my eyes caught the first Seal Maiden!And the one following behind is my true love.This written last spring: I got lost this past weekend in Maine - took a wrongturn somewhere, but oh, what a blessing in disguise, and under the direction of La Que Sabe, The One Who Knows, because while driving the winding road within feet of the sea, I came upon a life-sized sculpture of Neptune with his trident! Oh my God of the Sea, my Goddess of the Sea, how I longed to jump in that body of water, as naked as on the day of my birth like one of the Wild Seal Maidens!

A Sacred Container

In my work, I am a witness to many emotions. For those of you who understand astrology, my Moon is in the fourth house in the sign of Cancer. I am at home with emotions. Creating space for, and offering emotional safety to others is one of my highest priorities in life. I am committed to expressing my own emotions, however challenging and I strive to learn as many skills as I can to strengthen my ability to offer emotional counsel to others. I know that one of my gifts to the world is a true comfort with emotions of all sizes, shapes and intensities! I tell my clients, "I will create a sacred container for you, a sacred space for you to shed your tears, speak your truth, tell your stories, explore your dreams (nighttime or otherwise!) and feel your rage, grief and pain." We are mind, body, soul and emotions. Our emotions are our guides. Our love and passions guide us to our joy. Our anger brings us to our power and informs us about what is and what is not acceptable and authentic to our life. Our sadness washes us clean, releases the past and allows new doors to open.

Welcome Home

Welcoming your emotions brings you home to yourself. When I feel something, I say to myself, "Welcome Home. This feeling is welcoming me back into my body. This is where life is. This is where love is. This is where my hope and my dreams are."

Creative Sacred Living Magazine: A Seaside Ritual with the Spirit of my Father, and Letting Go

I'm honored to have been published in the August and September Full Moon issues of this absolutely beautiful, inspiring magazine! These essays share two sacred experiences I have had around the death of my father this summer and the process of letting go of a box of memories as I prepared to see my son fly out of our nest, and away to college. Make sure to turn your speakers up to hear the sacred music as you read!

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Inspirational posts, pictures and dialogue.

On This Page

You will find everything you need to know about:

~services

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Click on the pictures in this right-hand column to magically enter new areas of our MotherRoots web site .

Where we are located...

MotherRoots is located in Nottingham, New Hampshire, and is very accessible from Southern Maine, and North-eastern Massachusetts. Click on the heart to get directions from your location.

Services Offered

For a description of the therapeutic services available at the MotherRoots Healing Center, please click the banner above

Rates for Services

I choose to look at money as Green Energy.

When we share our energy with others it can come back to us three-fold! The more we invest in our well-being, the deeper the roots of our well-being will run, flow, expand and manifest into the solid ground of who we are and what our authentic selves desire in this "one, wild and precious life" of ours! I hope you will invest in yourself by scheduling a session with MotherRoots today!

1 hour session $75.00

1 1/2 hour session $100.00

1/2 hour session $45.00

Home~visits available! Add $25.00

I do offer Sliding Scale and Barter options on an as-needed basis. Call or write to me to discuss this.

About Melissa

Melissa's Bio

Workshops and Groups

Groups and Classes Honoring the Divine Feminine at the MotherRoots Healing Center.

Wise Woman University

Here you can sign up for and/or read about my online course: Reclaiming Artemis: Calling Passion, Power and Wildness Back Into Your Life!

My Interview with Susun Weed!

Wise Woman Radio

Listen to my recent interview with Susun Weed!

Radio Show on Summer Solstice!

I just love Rustie MacDonalds radio show, Living and Thriving with Rustie.
On Summer Solstice, June 20, 2012 from 1 - 2:30 pm, you can hear my talk on the Great Wheel of the Year.
Do you want to hear a great discussion on how to connect more fully on a spiritual and emotional level to the seasons and the moon?
Listen to Melissa live on Summer Solstice!
Visit http://www.blogtalkradio.com/rustie/2012/06/20/living-thriving to set your e-mail alert!

"Our listening creates a sanctuary for the homeless parts within another person."

~Rachel Naomi Remen

Craniosacral Therapy

Visit the Upledger Institute where I received my Advanced training for Craniosacral Therapy and Somato-Emotional Release.

Melissa's Musings

My blog

The Red Tent Temple

Enter the Red Tent Temple at the MotherRoots Healing Center

What to Expect in Your Healing Session

My studio is always warm, comfortable and inviting. You will hear sacred, relaxing music. I use therapeutic grade essential oils in all of my massage oils. I can design a special blend for you according to your emotional, spiritual and physical situation upon request.

This is what you can expect here: You will lie on a comfortable, warm table and you will enter within yourself and you will relax. The rest is in the Mystery. The Wise Woman tradition of healing teaches us to view ourselves as already whole and healed. My training through the Upledger Institute has reinforced this as well. When I work with you and your body, I am holding the vision of your healed self. All I ask is that you come with an attitude of "expecting a miracle" and you never know! Miracles can occur. I've seen them many times. Blessed Be.